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Jefferson's Medialist View of History American Studies in Scandinavia, 47:1 (2015), pp. 3-21. Published by the Nordic Association for American Studies (NAAS). Differences of Circumstance, Differences of Fact: Jefferson’s Medialist View of History M. Andrew Holowchak University of the Incarnate Word, Texas Abstract: It is often assumed that Jefferson—acquainted with the writings of Scottish thinkers such as Adam Ferguson, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Lord Kames, Adam Smith, and John Millar—was a stadialist of some persuasion, as several of his writ- ings are at least consistent with stadialism. If so, was he a cyclicalist, committed to a society having a life-cycle, or a linearist, committed to the possibility of continued convergence toward some ideal of perfection? An important letter to William Ludlow and several writings where Jefferson writes of human progress as imprescriptible suggest linear stadialism. Numerous other writings, point to urbanization as a stage of social decay, and suggest cyclicalism. The correct answer, I argue, is that Jefferson was neither a linearist nor a cyclicalist, but a medialist. He viewed movement toward increased urbanization as symptomatic of social decline, but always believed any so- ciety, by rooting itself in an agrestic manner—a normative mean between the excesses of subsistence living and urbanization—could avert decline and even work toward continued advance. Key Words: Jefferson, progress, cyclical stadialism, lineal stadialism, medial stadialism A “philosophic observer” on a trip from the Rocky-Mountain west to the eastern sea-coast, Jefferson writes in a letter to William Ludlow (6 Sept. 1824), would see a temporal survey of “the progress of man from the in- fancy of creation to the present day.” Seeing lawless savages in the West, 4 American Studies in Scandinavia, 47:1 he would come to see frontiersmen, farmers, and finally seaport citizens.1 The letter to Ludlow betrays a purchase of stadialism—the notion that societies pass through fairly well-defined stages. Stadialism was popular in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century and can be found in some measure in the writings of coetaneous Scottish thinkers. Cyclical stadialists, on analogy with living organisms, assume that societies have a life cycle—from birth and growth to decline and death. Linear stadialists, in contrast, merely assume the possibility of continual convergence toward an ideal of perfection. It is often assumed that Jefferson, acquainted with the writings of each Scottish thinker, was a stadialist of some persuasion, as several of his writ- ings are at least consistent with stadialism. If so, was he a cyclicalist or a linearist? The letter to Ludlow and several writings where Jefferson writes of human progress as imprescriptible suggest linear stadialism. Numerous other writings, point to urbanization as a stage of social decay, and suggest cyclicalism. Yet Jefferson, I argue, was neither a linearist nor a cyclicalist, but a medialist. He viewed movement toward increased urbanization as symptomatic of social decline, but always believed any society, by rooting itself in an agrestic manner—a normative mean between the excesses of subsistence living and urbanization—could avert decline and even work toward continued improvement. Stadialism and Conjectural History The view Jefferson expresses in his letter to Ludlow is in keeping with the tenor of eighteenth-century Scottish-Enlightenment thinking, characterized by the push for agricultural improvement, the creation of public spaces for scientific societies and clubs, and in general, the belief in the advance of all sciences, even politics, and religion. The unswerving belief in the ad- vance of scientific institutions gave birth to conjectural history—a “back- projection of documented social trends combined with the comparative eth- nography of primitive societies.”2 Conjectural history enabled historians to draw inferences about the past beyond the safe limits of “reliable historical 1 I would like to thank the journal’s two reviewers, Csaba Lévai and Aki Kalliomäki for aidful comments concerning a prior draft of this paper. 2 Colin Kidd, “Subscription, the Scottish Enlightenment and the Moderate Interpretation of History,” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 55, No. 3, 2004, 507–8. DIFFERENCES OF Circumstance 5 evidence” in an effort to “explain” and serve present-day normative needs, which included foremost moral progress. Thus, history was not merely a descriptive discipline, whose aim was veridical narrative, it was also a nor- mative discipline, whose aim was moral improvement. In the main, the nor- mative aim of stadialists trumped the descriptive aim, and so they believed that theoretical economy that served a moral purpose in the writing of his- tory was preferable to trying to be true to the actual anfractuous course of nature. In that regard, veridicality was an ancillary concern. Conjectural history is characteristically linked with stadialism—the no- tion, in Jefferson’s day, that a state and its parts passed through stages, mostly, though not always, well defined. Stadialism, with roots in antiquity (e.g., Plato for whom every poleis had a life-cycle3), was birthed in Scot- land and held by Scottish and French thinkers4—e.g., Adam Smith,5 David Hume,6 Adam Ferguson,7 John Millar,8 Lord Kames,9 William Robertson,10 Claude-Adrien Helvétius,11 and Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot12—in the 3 Plato’s argument is based in the imperfection of the material world, in which all things are generated and destroyed. Thus, even the best polis with the best constitution must decay (R., 546a). Plato, Republic, trans. G.M.A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992). 4 “That stadialism arose in Scotland was not coincidental,” writes Neil Hargraves, “[as] 18th century Scotland was in many ways a museum of archaic social forms, from the ‘barbarous’ highlanders to the feudal remnants of the lowlands.” Neil Hargraves, “Enterprise, Adventure and Industry: The formation of ‘Commercial Char- acter’ in William Robertson’s History of America,” History of European Ideas, Vol. 29, 2003, 35. 5 Adam Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, ed. R.L. Meek, D.D. Rapheale, and P.G. Stein (Oxford University Press, 1990), LJ(A) I.26–35 and 19–30 and LJ(B) 149–51. 6 David Hume, “Origin of Government,” Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (India- napolis: Liberty Fund, 1987), 40, and “The British Government,” Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, 51. 7 Ferguson, unlike his fellow Scots, was disinclined to view human progress as removal from the state of nature. “If we admit that man is susceptible of improvement, and has in himself a principle of progression, and a desire of perfection, it appears improper to say, that he has quitted the state of his nature, when he has begun to proceed; or that he finds a station for which he was not intended, while, like other animals, he only follows the disposition, and employs the powers that nature has given.” Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, fifth ed. (London, 1782), 13. 8 John Millar, The Origins of the Distinction of Ranks: Or, An Inquiry into the Circumstances which Give Riser to Influence and Authority, in the Different Members of Society, Fourth Edition (Edinburgh, 1806), 5–6. 9 Henry Home [Lord Kames], Sketches of the History of Man, vol. 3 (Edinburgh, [1774] 1813), 159–65 and 176, and The Gentleman Farmer, being an Attempt to Improve Agriculture by Subjecting It to the Test of Rational Principles, 4th edition (Edinburgh: 1798), xix–xx. 10 William Robertson, The History of the Discovery and Settlement of America (New York: Harper & Broth- ers, 1855), 131. 11 Claude Adrien Helvétius, Treatise on Man: His Intellectual Faculties and his Education, transl. W. Hooper, M. D., (London: Albion Press, 1810). 12 Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, A Philosophical Review of the Successive Advances of the Human Mind, in Turgot on Progress, Sociology and Economics, ed. R.L. Meek (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1750] 1973). 6 American Studies in Scandinavia, 47:1 modes sketched below, and by others, in more deviant forms.13 Writes Guy Reynolds: The Stadialist saw the progress of civilizations as a steady upward movement through a series of distinct stages—from early pastoralism through a society of trade toward the modern industrial order. … Intellectuals and writers built on late eighteenth-century philosophies of history to create detailed models of progress that informed the broader culture. From James Fenimore Cooper’s historical fictions to Thomas Cole’s series of paintings, The Course of Empire, nineteenth-century Americans envisaged distinctive representations of the relations between “civilization” and “savagism,” and they embed- ded their images or narrative within a theory of progress.14 There is no one-size-fits-all definition of “stadial history” that applies to all stadialists, and that is probably because stadialism was, faute de mieux, more of a methodological heuristic used by conjectural historians to link human barbarism to the modern man of the eighteenth century than a meth- od, aiming to replace traditional narrative approaches to history.15 It might have been more complementary to than frictional with traditional narrative approaches to history. The number of stages for stadialists was generally a matter of unobjec- tionable disagreement, although many—e.g., Smith and Ferguson—agreed on four stages (hunting, pasturage, agriculture, and commerce).16 Etiologi- cal conveniency, not etiological correctness, was often the chief desidera- tum.17 As Dugald Stewart wrote in a preface to Adam Smith’s The Theory of 13 Karen O’Brien, “Between Enlightenment and Stadial History: William Robertson on the History of Eu- rope”, Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1, 1993, 53–54. 14 Guy Reynolds, Apostles of Modernity: American Writers in the Age of Development (Lincoln, NE: Univer- sity of Nebraska Press, 2008), 16. 15 H.M. Höpfl, “From Savage to Scotsman: Conjectural History in the Scottish Enlightenment,” Journal of British Studies, Vol.
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